Tales from Ohio State: How the Class of '08 Found Jobs

In the postcrash era, Ohio State grads say they found work—but barely

By

Melissa Korn

Updated Sept. 14, 2013 6:30 p.m. ET

Megan Abady wasn't thrilled to move to Wisconsin after graduating from Ohio State University in the spring of 2008. But a job was a job, and this one, a supply-chain position at Kimberly-Clark Corp., paid fairly well. So the marketing major signed the contract and expressed relief that, unlike many of her classmates, she was employed.

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Ms. Abady, who turns 27 this weekend, has since moved back to Ohio and earns a "comfortable" living as a merchandise planner at retailer The Limited. "I was one of the luckier ones," she says of her first five years out of school, a half-decade that coincided with a world-wide financial crisis and one of the toughest hiring markets in recent memory.

Welcome to the class of 2008, college graduates who stepped into the real world just when few would want—and now have their own war stories. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the rate of unemployment for fresh graduates—those 20 to 24—shot up dramatically after the crisis, from 5.4% in 2007 to a peak of 9.2% in 2010. It improved to 7.8% to 2012, the most recent year available, but experts say this group is earning substantially less those who entered the workforce in better times.

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Megan Abady OSU '08
Maddie McGarvey for The Wall Street Journal

Graduates like Ms. Abady from Ohio State—one of the nation's largest schools—are no different. According to a dozen interviews with alumni and career-services officers from the school, many have taken jobs they didn't want, faced rounds of layoffs and earned barely enough to cover student-loan payments. Now at the age when their parents were established in their careers, families and homes, many say their own lives haven't really started. Even those with flourishing careers aren't necessarily on the paths they expected.

Justin Rasanow aspired to work in finance, but grew disenchanted after witnessing the crisis close-up. A financial planning major who graduated in December 2008, he thought he was paving the way to Wall Street by accepting a job at a Columbus brokerage firm. But when his supervisor's $100 million client portfolio lost more than half its value in the months following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Mr. Rasanow tired of "talking clients off a ledge."

Members of the Class of 2008 graduated at the onset of the financial crisis. Five of them share via Instagram how they've fared over the last five years.

So he quit, first moving back with his parents in Toledo to sell insurance, and then later he decided to leave finance. Last year, he was introduced to the owner of a firm that scans concrete to ensure construction projects don't hit underground utilities, and Mr. Rasanow, now 28, took a job as a regional manager in Tampa. His salary is nearly $100,000, he says, and comes without what he sees as the stigma of a career in banking.

"It's hard to get clients who are 70 years old and don't trust anybody. And they have every right to be less trusting," he says.

Other graduates at the school, spooked by massive layoffs at big employers, chose jobs that promised greater autonomy and a feeling of control over their careers.

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Justin Rasanow OSU '08
Edward Linsmier for The Wall Street Journal

Lindsay Freisthler initially "laughed in my recruiter's face" when asked during her senior year whether she could envision a career selling Mary Kay Cosmetics. Six years later, the human-resources major, now 27 and based in Columbus, earns more than $50,000 and leads a 100-person sales team. She's on track to land the company's signature pink Cadillac next year, and is eyeing a position as a national sales director someday.

Graduates who enter the workforce during a recession often don't feel settled professionally until age 28 or 29—two to three years later than those who get started during boom times, according to Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Recession-era graduates often require two additional job moves to get on track to a stable career.

"You're on the stairs, and that's the good news. But it adds a couple of steps," he says.

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Clay Lukas, who majored in communications at Ohio State, has a steady job working for a Mediterranean food importer in New York, but it took him years, and several false starts. After graduation, he moved to Denmark to work in nightclub promotions, only to return to the U.S. in late 2009—a moment when the hiring market was in a deep freeze.

He lasted six months at a Columbus collections agency, then moved back in with his parents, helping out at the family business and taking a part-time stint with the U.S. Census. After moving to New York City in 2010, he submitted more than 100 applications before he was hired by his current employer as a marketing assistant. Now a marketing production coordinator, Mr. Lukas says his salary of $52,000 is "barely" enough to cover living expenses and student-loan payments.

For some, though, struggles have turned into success. Matt Katz, 28, started professional life as a "glorified garbage man," earning $15 an hour sorting old files in the basement of a Manhattan real estate appraiser's office. Today, he is an appraiser himself. "I worked a crappy job, and got a better job out of that," says Mr. Katz, who this summer felt financially secure enough to propose to his girlfriend.

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